The madness continues with lemon bars, lemon sorbet and iced lemon cookies!

In Part I, Jane had a big hand in the Toddler Turbinado Lemonade, but this time around, I mostly flew solo, except for help with the cookies.

Lusciously Lemon-y Meyer Bars

I just love a good pucker-y lemon bar with a buttery crust, and this is it! Mine happened to be twice-baked (see photo of not-quite baked bars above and bars in pan below), not because I was aspiring to a new recipe, but because I took them out too early so I could wrestle apart Jane and Sam and run them around the backyard to settle them down.

Not to worry, though - when I came back twenty minutes later, I just put the pan back in the oven until the bars were perfectly baked. To speed up the process and to make sure that they wouldn’t be over-baked, I cut up the bars into individual squares so the heat would be distributed evenly for each serving-sized piece.

Here is the recipe adapted from alpineberry:

Ingredients

Crust

• 1 cup all purpose flour
• 1/2 cup confectioners’ sugar
• 1/8 tsp salt
• 1 stick cold unsalted butter, cut into 1/2 inch pieces

Filling

• 2 large eggs
• 1 cup bakers’ sugar
• 2 tbsp all purpose flour
• 1/8 tsp salt
• 2 tsp finely grated lemon zest (I added at least twice this amount)
• 1/4 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice

Instructions

• Preheat oven to 350F.
• Butter and line an 8-inch square pan with parchment paper. (I couldn’t find ours, so used a round pan and it worked fine).
• Combine flour, sugar and salt in a bowl. If you’re using a food processor, add butter and pulse until the mixture is pebbly. You can also try using a hand mixer. Press the crust mixture evenly into the bottom of your prepared pan.
• Bake until the crust is lightly golden, about 18-20 minutes; then set it aside.
• In a medium bowl, whisk together the eggs, sugar, flour and salt.
• Whisk in the lemon zest and juice until well combined.
• Pour the filling mixture over the baked crust - no need to wait until the crust is cool.
• Bake until the filling is just set, about 15 to 18 minutes. Then cool completely and cut into bars or individual servings and dust with confectioner’s sugar.

Sweet Meyer Sorbet

This recipe is very simple. I made it after the kids went to bed and did the final blending in the morning before they woke up. If you like super sweet and super pucker-y, this sorbet is for you. I wasn’t going for subtle and made sure this would wake up my taste buds! You can always reduce the amount of sugar and reduce the amount of lemon zest and juice to tone down the flavor.

Meyer Zing Iced Lemon Cookies

I modified Buff Chickpea’s recipe for the icing and cookies, and I have to say that the cookies were a bit bland for my liking. I much prefer my Sweet and Simple Crunchy Sugar Cookies to these, but the zing of this icing is out of this world! My next baking experiment will be the SSCSC rolled in less sanding sugar and topped with this zesty icing.

Ingredients

Dough

• 2 1/4 cups flour
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 cup butter, softened
• 3/4 cup sugar (I modified to a 1/2 cup)
• 1 egg
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 1/2 tablespoons finely grated Meyer lemon rind (I modified to about twice that amount)

Icing

• 2 tablespoons Meyer lemon juice (I modified to 2-3 times that amount)
• 1 tablespoon finely grated Meyer lemon rind (I modified to at least twice that amount and made a crude zest to get more intense flavor in every bite)
• 1 cup confectioner’s sugar

Instructions

• Mix butter on high speed until fluffy, then add the sugar and egg.
• Continue mixing on medium speed, adding vanilla extract and lemon zest.

• In a separate bowl, sift together the dry ingredients.
• Mixing on low speed, slowly add the flour mixture to the creamed butter mixture until blended.
• Gather dough into a ball, cover with plastic wrap, and refrigerate for 1 hour.
• While dough is chilling, make the icing by adding the lemon zest to the powdered sugar, then slowly add the lemon juice. Mix until well-combined.
• Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.
• Remove the dough from the refrigerator, scoop out the dough balls (or form them by hand) onto an ungreased cookie sheet.
• Flatten the cookies with a glass or measuring cup, coating the bottom of the glass or cup with sugar between flattening. The flatter the cookie, the crispier the cookie. (I preferred the fatter to the flatter). A variation on this recipe is to forego the flattening and simply roll the dough balls in colored sanding sugar for a festive look and a chunkier bite!
• Bake for 10-12 minutes until the edges are golden brown. Tranfer to racks to cool completely.
• When the cookies have cooled, you can either spoon the icing onto the tops of the cookies like I did, or use a pastry bag or plastic bag to pipe the icing in any pattern you like. If the icing is too runny, add more confectioner’s sugar; if the icing is too thick, add more lemon juice.

Stay tuned for Meyer Madness Part III: The Finale! Here’s your teaser: lemon, mint and strawberries . . .

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Chrissy – who has written 422 posts on The Outlaw Mom® Blog - Creative Living in a Conventional World.

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